 There's been a lot of news lately about Wendy Williams and she actually sat down with Katie Curick to discuss a sober house that she's been living in. And because of this news, a lot of people have asked, what the heck is a sober living house? Well, I am an addict and alcoholic in recovery. I actually never went through a drug and alcohol treatment center when I got sober. I actually got sober in a sober house. So there's a lot of questions about what is a sober house. I've worked in a treatment center while I was working in a treatment center for three years and I had a lot of questions about what is a sober house as well. So in this video, I looked to kind of explain what a sober living house is from my own experience, living in one, as well as my experience helping people get into various sober living houses. So this is going to be a video for you if you're thinking about going into a sober living house or if you have a loved one who's struggling with addiction and wondering if sober living might be a good option for them. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about things like mental health, addiction recovery, some social commentary and all sorts of stuff. So if you're into that, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. So yeah, like I said, we're going to be talking about what is a sober living house because a lot of people are wondering because Wendy Williams isn't one. So before I get started, I am not a licensed clinician. I am going to be speaking of a place from personal experience, from myself in my addiction recovery, living in a sober living house, as well as working at an addiction treatment center where I would help people get into sober living homes, as well as kind of let them know what they were all about. So anyways, there are a few different types of sober living houses. Actually, there's mainly two. There's ones that you privately pay for and then there's ones that insurance will cover. So first I'll start out with my story and kind of explain the benefits of a sober living home. So when I got sober, I didn't want to get sober, okay? My mom, you know, she found my drugs. I just got out of the hospital. I had a 10% chance of living. I had congestive heart failure. And my mom had been sober for seven years at that time. Now she's on her 14th year of sobriety. But anyways, I brought drugs into her house because I had no plans on getting sober. She found those, threw them away and said, Chris, you're either living on the streets or you're going into a sober living home. And I begged her, begged her, begged her not to have me live in a sober living house. Like, for me personally, like, like I hated living with people. I hated having even one roommate. Like, have you ever like moved in with your best friend and it only took a matter of time until you started hating that person? Yeah. Like, I just liked living by myself. And the sober living house that I was going to move into had 18 men in there. Okay. So aside from me, 17 other people trying to stay sober. And that sounded like my worst nightmare, right? Like, you know, living with other people, sharing a room with other people and things like that, which actually turned out to be very beneficial. I'll touch on that in a second. But something that I heard from family members working with them, while I was working at the treatment center, they were discussed how like, you know, you know, so and so doesn't want to live in a sober living house. I'm like, no crap. No crap. Like, nobody wants to live in a sober living house, right? A lot of people struggling with addiction don't even want to get clean. I'm one of those people. So a lot of addiction recovery, what I try to teach people based on my own experience is addiction recovery is not about what you want to do. It's about what you need to do. Okay. Now for me personally, the only thing worse than moving into a sober living home was living on the streets, right? Like, I just, I wasn't about to do that. So I was like, fine, I'll check out this sober living home. So this is my experience. All sober living houses are going to be different and have different rules, different guidelines. But anyways, I went in there for like the interview to discuss like moving in there and when I walked in, everything was just so clean, right? And in my addiction, I lived like a freaking slob and I walked in there and like, it smelled like cleaning products and like the carpets. You could still see the vacuum lines and everything. And it was just in pristine condition. So like that's, that was kind of weird to me. Like 18 guys living here in this place, is that nice and clean? So like me being like the joke I was when I first got sober, like I asked to do it. I'm like, is this what you guys always do? Like, do you guys like prep the house and make it look all nice and fancy so you can take my money and get me to live in this sober living house? That's really a mess. And he's like, he's like, no, he's like, this looks like this every day because people here have chores. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, what? Part of living in that sober living home, like part of the deal to live in there, everybody had chores. Everybody had a chore to do every single day. It was a really big house. I think it had one, two, three, four, five, five bedrooms. Okay. And it was a big house and there was a backyard. And basically one of the deals for living in that sober living house was having a daily chore and every week it would rotate, right? So maybe one week you have like the upstairs bathroom, maybe one week you had the downstairs living room, maybe one week you had the kitchen, one week you had the yard, you know, whatever it was. And we would, it would rotate, right? But that's how it kept the house clean. And I would hear people saying like, well, I'm paying you to be here. I don't want to do this. But like a lot of people were covering from addiction. They need that structure. They need that. Like, like I didn't want to do that, but I was the type of person where I never cleaned my house. I never made my bed. I never did any of those things. So it got me in a habit of doing that every single day. Like we had to have our chore done by like eight o'clock, right? Anyways, living in there, there was also some other guidelines at my sober living. It was an all male house. There are some co-ed houses, which I don't recommend at all. I've never once heard a good story. That's just my experience. I've never heard a good story about a co-ed sober living. But anyways, it was all men. The guidelines weren't too strict. Like we had nightly house meetings. You had a curfew, right? When we left, we had to sign out and then say what time we were going to be home. Part of living there, we had to go to five 12-step meetings a week. And we had to get a sheet signed and bring it back in to show we were going to them and things like that. On the weekends, you can get a pass to go and I stay with your family and all of that. And the curfew, if you were doing good in that sober living, the curfew would be flexible. If you were going out with family to dinner and you were going to be back after curfew or if you were going to a sober event or whatever. From my experience, a lot of sober living homes, they have a blackout period where you can't use your phone, leave unless you're going to a 12-step meeting. And again, this is for accountability purposes as well. A lot of people, the highest rate of relapse from my experience is in that first one to two weeks. So some of them have a blackout period, so you're less likely to relapse until you get some structure. And yeah, the benefits of the sober living home for me was having people to talk to. And people who are on the same mission as I was. A lot of people who would ask me about moving into sober living, they would say, moving back in with their family is very triggering. Maybe their family still keeps alcohol in the house or drinks, or maybe one of them is an alcoholic. Or some of them even use drugs. In a sober living house, they get booted out if they bring drugs in. Sometimes it would be a warning. Each house has a house manager, and they make those decisions. But it's a safe place in early recovery. So if you have a living environment that's not safe, like a sober living house is a great, great, great option. But the other thing is a lot of people, their biggest trigger, if we're being honest, is their family. Some people, they're like, oh, no, I'm not going to live in sober living. I'm just going to go live with my mom. But maybe your mom is your biggest trigger. I've seen people who were married and decided to live in a sober living house for a while, which was a great thing to do because it allowed both people to heal and then move back in together. Because maybe their relationship was a big trigger. So a sober living house mainly helps you get structure. You have support. Most people, or some people want to live by themselves when they're first getting sober. The way I think about it is, I would have a really rough day at work, and then I would go home, buy myself, isolate, the thoughts would start going, and then I would be like, OK, I'm going to drink or use drugs. As sober living house, no matter what your day is like, you get to go home and talk to other people who get you. There's just this, every day when you're coming home, there's a support system. When you wake up, there is a support system. I met three of my best friends in that sober living house, and we're all still sober today, coming up on seven years. And those guys helped save my life. Like, we would go to meetings together. We would work on our steps together. We would keep each other accountable. We would provide support. Three of us actually moved in together after we left that sober living house. So a lot of people develop these bonds and friendships that can last even a lifetime. So anyways, like I was saying, that sober living was private pay. That can range depending on what it is. Like the one I was at, it was $500 a month. Thank God my mom was paying for it because I was broke. But I've seen other sober living homes that are a little bit cheaper, maybe $400, $450. But there's also sober living homes that are extremely expensive. Like, I've heard of some sober living homes like in Manhattan where people are paying like $10,000 a month to live in a penthouse or whatever, right? So yeah, that is something that you got to think about is it is private pay. But like for me, it was just the $500 a month. But that included utilities, like power, the cable bill, all those things, right? The internet so I can get Wi-Fi on my phone or a laptop and things like that. So it's pretty much all-inclusive. And most of them, you're going to have to get your own food. I was on food stamps. I was living on that Robin diet. But yeah, so for the most part, that's what a private pay sober living is like. One of the other questions I get is, does insurance cover sober living? Typically, that answer is no. But it is possible. And here's how it's done. So you have different levels of care, right? So like the treatment center I was working at, we had detox, we had residential, we had PHP, which is partial hospitalization program. And then we had IOP, intensive outpatient program. At our PHP and IOP level, people were provided with sober living. So basically what the treatment center does is while you're in treatment, they take some of the money insurance is paying for your treatment and use that to cover your living expenses, okay? So they're doing that more as like a courtesy and it's included in the treatment. But insurance typically does not specifically pay for sober living, all right? And by the way, if you have any questions about this, leave them down in the comments below. If this is a topic that you're interested in, let me know for future videos. But so the way insurance covers it is typically you have to be doing some type of treatment. After IOP, there's OP, which is outpatient. And typically maybe you're doing treatment like three times a week for a couple hours a day and things like that, but same deal. The treatment center allocates some of that insurance money to cover your sober living costs, all right? And some treatment centers that even do like, they'll hope with like job placement or they'll like prepare you to go job hunting. So some people living in a sober living, they're still in treatment. But other people, they graduated from the program, they have a job, and rather than getting their own place, they just pay to live in that sober living home. So that is pretty much sober living in a nutshell. I recommend everybody in early somebody go to sober living. I swear it saved my life. I don't know if I would be clean and sober or even alive today if it wasn't for sober living. Like the guys I was in there with, they helped me out more than I could even explain. If any of you have experience with sober living, let me know down in the comments below. There are also like, I'm not gonna lie, there are bad sober livings. It's like any other business out there, there are good ones and bad ones. If you guys want me to do more topics on sober living, let me know down in the comments below. One thing that I always tell people to is like getting a group of addicts and alcoholics who just got sober to live together is not sober living. And typically it works out terribly from my experience. From my experience, I've seen just the worst things happen. If you want me to make videos about why that's a bad idea, feel free to let me know down in the comments below. All right, but anyways, I hope you learned a little bit about sober living. There's a bunch of resources. Like if you're looking for sober living, just type it into Google, see which ones are available in your area. Call, ask questions, see if there's any reviews, if anybody has experience with it. You know, for example, like my mom called for me to get information on it. There was a few sober livings in the city I was in. But yeah, just do some research on it. And if there's any other topics you want me to cover in this realm, just let me know. All right, but that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you are new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell. And a huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You're all amazing. And I'm going to post the March Patreon Q&A, so go check that out. All right, ask your questions. All right, thanks again so much for watching. I'll see you next time.